Kade kneels next to a stream formed by the San Francisco Glacier, about two hours outside Santiago, Chile.

Saturday, September 17, 2016

Briton killings in Thailand recreated

I vividly recall being at Kade's that first couple of years I was in Thailand and watching the news one particular night. They were reporting on a big murder, and the police had taken the assailant back out to the crime scene to walk through a reenactment (like in the above video). Perhaps this was a part of the state's building of a case and was a common legal procedure. Not exactly sure. But I remember thinking how bizarre it was that a reenactment was part of the process. What disturbed me the most, though, was that the people in the community where the crime took place, and perhaps some of the family of the victim, were out there too. And they were angry and hysterical, of course. They themselves wanted blood! It was like the investigators and police were given them a chance to lash out at the murderer. I just thought it was so unnecessary - the reenactment, the tipping off of the reenactment so a mob could turn out, etc.. Just weird. And I'm pretty sure I said to Kade, "Gosh, couldn't imagine this playing out like this in the USA." But the more I lived in Thailand, and the more I reflected back on my year in Tashkent and summer in Alberta, there were many moments like this when I make quick criticisms of the strange land I was in without always having the full picture in front of me. Travelers and tourists do this. And you might even learn later that what you'd seen was taken out of context or there indeed was something akin to it or worse in your own country. Just proved to me how blind we could be, I could be.

"When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable." - Clifton Fadiman